The Brad Hole

i registered to vote a few months back - the deadline to register in pennsylvania is also today (oct 4th).

I agree- it is vitally important that everyone vote this November!
http://www.udevgames.com/

:-)

Oct. 4th here in Texas too. I wonder if that's a federal thing.

No, some states you don't even have to specially register.

http://www.fec.gov/votregis/state_voter_reg_deadlines02.htm

North Dakota doesn't and, unsurprisingly, they have one of the highest voter turnouts.

You have to *register* to vote?? You're not *automatically* registered being a regular US resident??

Over here you get a registration card via snail mail a few weeks before election day, so you can still ask for the papers to vote via mail. We also don't have these voting machines, so nobody messes things up and votes for candidates he doesn't want...

Over here - that is Germany, "the old Europe" which wasn't "with us, so they're against us", as Bush/Rumsfeld put it, after France and Germany told them they were not taking part in their "coalition of the willing" (sic!). The French President and German Chancellor told the President of the United States that there were (despite the colorful multimedia presentation in front of the United Nations) no proofs (none at all!) for Iraqi A/B or those cheap C-weapons (which even I can produce using some weed-killer and detergent), that maybe the US themselves might be in possession of some - very few, of course - weapons of mass-destruction, and that war in general sucks. Well, I think Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld didn't really like this point of view ;) Obviously, reality proved them wrong and Chirac and Schroeder right. Hrmpf.

Silencer

> "We also don't have these voting machines, so nobody messes things up and votes for candidates he doesn't want..."

You think that not using voting machines prevents voting irregularities? Think again. In fact, it is basically impossible to administer a large-scale vote without errors occurring. The trick is to minimize the error rate, and prevent fraud. It's not easy. Particularly when perpetuators of such fraud are more likely to be elected to the U.S. Senate than they are to be punished. :-)

heh heh :-)

If I remember correctly, there was only one state with a large number of irregularities with voting machines - Florida, administered by... whatshisname? whereshefrom? whoshisbrother?

No, of course no election is perfect, still I consider the German system as inferior (it was, funny enough, installed by US, UK and French military governments in the late 40s). It works like this (if you're interested). In Germany, you don't elect the Chancellor directly. You vote for parties. Those parties (we have five main parties, and hundreds of smaller ones) get a certain piece of the cake. The bigger the piece, the more important they are in parliament. The Parliament elects the Chancellor.

Now, on election day, there's a team in the polling station. The job of those folks is to watch over the election - check that people are actually allowed to vote in this district, watch the ballot-box, count the voters, care for a ballpen in the polling-booth etc. This team consists of members of the parties - two left-wings, two right-wings, two greens, two liberals (depending on the actual piece of the cake for the parties in question). There are two shifts in the team, and after the poll is over (6 p.m.) , both teams meet and count the votes. Manually. And they recount it until everybody (!) in the team personally claims that the result is correct.

This usually takes only two to three hours, because all electoral districts have only up to maybe 1,000 or 2,000 voters. These small districts drastically reduce the risk of fraud. You will have

Because the political interests are so different within the team (there may be neo-fascists as well as marxists, catholic conservatives and homosexuals on the same team), I have never heard that there were any irregularities in Germany. Ever. Well, at least not since the fuckin' Nazis are gone. (And for East Germany: Not ever since 1990, after the wall came down, the also fuckin' commies were gone and they've had their very first free election.)

Silencer

Thanks for the description of Germany's voting system- very interesting! - Matt

I think the opposition in germany and france had more to do with the bribes from saddam in the form of the oil-for-food scandal. For russia, it was the illegal weapons and supplies they were providing iraq. They didn't want any of this to come out. So get off your soapbox...it was the right thing to do, and the coalition would have been more complete if it weren't for all the fraud and bribes. Europe makes me sick.

I'm not sure what you mean with the oil for food "scandal". I can't see anything scandalous in helping people not to starve BY ANY MEANS.

Obviously, you, "realist", weren't awoke in history lessons, otherwise you would know why the Germans and the French really dislike wars. If you missed those lessons, I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war (go down all the links and LEARN). Being there, you could also look up the word "Imperialism", which is exactly what the world (including the rest of Mr Bush's great "coalition of the willing") doesn't like when it comes to America.

It's ignorant people like you who are responsible for terrorism against the western part of the world. Learning a foreign language helps to understand the world. I suggest that you do that. And no, I don't mean British English.

Maybe you should learn a little more yourself before spouting platitudes. Though there might not be much coverage about the billions of dollars in oil that were floated around from saddam's regime to france and germany(the food never got to the people, it was just used to further his own agenda), and the payoffs to Khofi Annan to look the other way. If you've never heard any of this, I suggest you look it up. By the way, in Saddam's records, were documents showing that French diplomats were taking bribes to keep it's security council vote from backing any action against saddam.

Btw, I agree with the sentiment against war. It's just a good thing that we(the US) didn't listen to those in our own country advocating isolationism in 1941. Of course, its rude to bring that up, but I'm tired of lectures from people who have obviously not learned from history.

Doing the right thing is not rarely popular, it's just the right thing.

Oh, and you pompous twit, I speak 3 languages(I know, not as many as some, sorry).

I'm not going to tolerate insults in the comments of my blog. If you want to spout your political viewpoints and insult people you don't agree with in the process, do it somewhere else. Furthermore, if you choose to do this behind the veil of a fake e-mail, don't be surprised to find your comment yanked.